Three pairs in a day

Up late for a pancake breakfast after another broken night's sleep. I spent the morning building an archive of the biblical Reflections I've posted on the WhatsApp Morning Prayer thread over the past two and a half years. I deleted many of them from my Google drive, to save space so it was a matter of downloading the entire thread and going through thousands of entires to delete everything else that wasn't one of my contributions. It took me over two hours to save a file with 2020-2021 entries. The rest will have to wait for the moment.

Clare cooked an excellent stir fry with mussels and rice for lunch. After we had our siesta we went out for a walk. It was cloudy with occasions glimpses of sun and gusts of wind. Still nothing like summer weather in the forecast for the net month, meanwhile southern Europe continues to swelter, though for the moment the incidence of wildfires is slowly diminishing. After one circuit of Llandaff Fields Clare returned home, but I continued walking for another hour and a half.

I was buzzed by low flying martins circling in an area where they were finding insects. There were swifts and swallows over the Taff, and a noticed a pair of egrets standing on the water's edge of the east bank just below Blackweir Bridge. Then two herons flew down-river, turning away to circle low together for a short while before splitting up and disappearing from sight. I also saw a pair of red admiral butterflies circling each other in their mating dance. Of the three pairs I only got a long distance photo of the egrets, but it was great to see, making a change from gulls, magpies, pidgeons and crows which predominate. 

When I got home, I had a large slice of the apple pie which Clare made yesterday. Just delicious. Half an hour later we had supper, then I settled down with the Chromebook to watch the last four episodes of 'Top Dog' before printing my sermon for tomorrow and turning in for the night

And now a festal season lockdown

Pancakes again for breakfast today, plus a couple of rashers of bacon from a packet opened a few days ago, an extra treat! There were more outbreaks of heavy rain, plus enough respite time to have a good walk in the park. I've been trying to figure out a setting in which to video the next batch of Morning Prayer videos. It's rather tricky to set anything up that looks good in the favoured portrait display mode, due to the phone camera's field of view at close range. I've cleared Clare's desk to make space for an icon, a big candle in a red vessel and an open bible. but positioning the phone to block avoid home office-like surroundings and having room to show my face as well is really frustrating. I have to record on the phone in one take so distribute via What'sApp. Anything edited on another device or taken with a proper camera doesn't render correctly when transferred back to the phone and I can't figure out why. You have to work with what you've got, however. And I can, with a bit more patience.

At tea time I had my appointment at the Heath Hospital, driving over there in the dark, and parking at the house of Vanessa and Keith, friends from St John's City Parish, to walk into the campus rather than risk not being able to park. I could have chanced it as the hospital turned out to be pretty quiet at that time of day, and during a pandemic. I was twenty minutes early and ushered in straight away. I had to change into a clinical theater gown, before going into the scan room for a briefing, and kitted out with  ear defenders, as the equipment is very noisy. The twenty nine minute sequence of scans, pairs of three, then four five and six minutes at different frequencies is a strange sci-fi like experience. Amazing imaging technology, invented and developed to a high degree of sophistication from scratch over the past sixty years. What a time to be alive.

When I returned to get my my car, I chatted with Vanessa and Keith on the doorstep for five minutes. It had just been announced on the phone that the lifting of meeting and travel restrictions for the Christmas feast has been cancelled nationally, because of the rapid surge of infections caused by the new contagious variant of covid-19. The changes come into effect at midnight tonight. I'm not surprised. Fortunately, church services haven't been cancelled, yet. This could have been foreseen a few days earlier. Such short notice will be create havoc, not just for families planning Christmas gatherings, but also for businesses which are already in an advanced stage of preparation and delivery of Christmas dinners.

Not much of interest to watch on telly this evening, so I worked on my New Year's Eve reflection and Morning Prayer combined video script. Very hard to keep within the optimum eight minutes. I tried a few experimental recordings, but wasn't satisfied with the result, and went to bed, not quite as late as usual.

Older phone poorer memory

I woke up in good time this morning to upload the first Morning Prayer video I prepared on Saturday, after listening to 'Thought for the Day'. Accidentally, I posted it to an individual rather than to the Parish daily prayer WhatsApp group, but spotted the error before the upload finished and cancelled it. When I tried uploading it to the correct destination, my phone stalled and complained that it was running out of memory. It a problem I often have, as factory default apps I never use can't be removed from the phone. They take up too much space. I have to limit the number of apps I install, and not allow data that can't be installed on the removable SD card to accumulate in the phone's internal memory. Redundant data needs removing to avoid the kind of problem I encountered. I had to do this before successful in uploading the 50mb video file of the day.

This week's uploads take up 500mb of space on the SD card, but when files are uploaded to WhatsApp, copies remain in the WhatsApp / Media /Video / Sent sub folder occupying much needed memory space. It wouldn't matter if I had a newer phone with 16 or 32GB of internal memory, but why should I? I prefer to take photos and make videos with a camera, not with a phone. Normally I don't need vast amounts of internal memory as I haven't needed to make phone videos until last week. Receiving a lot of videos on WhatsApp causes the phone to choke up, so I make a regular practice of removing almost everything I receive once it ceases to be of use or interest, or storing it on the SD card. I'll have to make a check each day this week to ensure this doesn't happen again.

I had a short walk before lunch and a longer one after lunch, and spent time writing and adding photos to my digital collection of pictures stored on hardware I own and not just on-line. Then an evening in front of the telly, with nothing better to do. 

Tech' sweatshop day

 Another Saturday lie-in and pancake breakfast to start the Sabbath! But not much of a day of rest for me. I was determined to prerecord all six services of Morning Prayer for the coming week to upload daily, rather than take the risk of doing it live each morning and having unforeseen technical failure or me failing to get myself properly organised to broadcast the live feed on WhatsApp. 

I've had an unprecedented run of good days since the operation, and it's been a joyful relief to get through each day with minimal discomfort or pain, and plenty of energy to enjoy everything I do. Unconsciously however, I remain on the alert against a reversal of fortunes, just when I least expect it. 'So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!', as St Paul reminds us. It's happened before and it was upsetting and demoralising. I expect this mindset will change eventually, if the final op is the success hoped and prayed for, but making fairly fail-safe plans is what I need to do for now, and I'm not ashamed of that.

Having already prepared the texts for each day, producing around thirty five minutes worth of recordings took me the two and a half hours that remained of the morning before lunch. The sky was overcast and I had to juggle with lights pointing at the ceiling to give the illusion of being in the full daylight. As editing footage wasn't possible due to the video rendering problem I failed to resolve yesterday, each day's video had to be done in one take. It wasn't as easy I as thought. 

My eyesight is deteriorating due to the cataract in my camera viewfinder eye. I need a very strong light to read fluently these days, and technically it wasn't possible to put a light source close enough to me and not affect the video recording. If it had been bright and sunny outdoors, I could have got away with it. I noticed in the playbacks that I fluffed some of my words and didn't quite get the sentence flow right, normally not a problem. But it was a good idea record them in advance. Doing it live in the early morning, when my eyesight is often at its worst, would not be such a good idea!

I certainly needed a siesta after lunch today, so it was starting to get dark by the time I got home have my afternoon circuit of the Parish streets, occasioned by a trip to the chemists to get some Tea Tree cream. On my way around I had a conversation with Mother Frances, about including the Church in Wales special prayer for Advent in the daily office. I explained that I'd recorded them which surprised her I think, but she understood why once I explained myself. I promised that I'd make a supplementary audio recording of the prayer, with accompanying slides of the texts, which I though I could do easily enough. Famous last words however.

The slides were easy enough to create, and I used a couple of photos taken of the NHS prayer station outside St Luke's which has stood in the locked porch of the church since early in the pandemic. I thought I might be able to use Google's old Picasa app to make the audio and slides into a video. I did the job fine until it got to the rendering stage, working as intended, but consistently failing to complete the job, getting stuck at 98.9% and not saving. Bizarre. 

Then I tried using the online Google Photos, having succeeded with stringing together some stills of Kath and Owain leaping into the air on Oxwich beach into a crude stop motion video. Another fail here however, as this app offers lots of themed templates of photos from your collection trawled together by their fancy image recognition AI Cloud software. As for letting the user decide what photos they wish to make into a slide video, forget it. There's no custom option, or at least none that is plainly visible on the otherwise user friendly interface.

I stopped to watch this week's double episode of 'The Valhalla Murders' on BBC Four and eventually, settled for using Windows Movie maker, going strong since Windows 7, and installed on my Windows 10 machine alongside a newer app that does the same thing but has a mystifying user interface. This did the job nicely. It didn't take long, and ran as expected in WhatApp. Altogether, it was an annoying frustrating evening, but I was relieved to have everything resolved by my my usual midnight bedtime.

Usefully occupied

I ended up going to bed late last night and sleeping late this morning, but I was out and about in time to go to the Eucharist at St John's. There were nine of us. I cooked lunch when I got home, and later went for a good long walk. Each day it seems to be just a little colder in the afternoon. There's sunshine but it's really humid, so it's hard t dry washing and the cold clings to you., something I remember well in my first month in Ibiza, as I hadn't packed enough warm clothes to take with me, expecting it to be milder.

The rest of the day was given over to working out where how to shoot videos of Morning Prayer using my phone, and trying out the texts for length. Five or six minutes are recommended. It was much harder than I imagined, and I had to set about pruning one text and then experiment with a video. It's less than straightforward. The pressure is on to get all six done in advance and post them on WhatsApp one a day, as I'm doing for the Daily Reflection I'm posting to WhatsApp this week.

The thought of recording live video on the day without making errors, and the uploading the finished product by eight in the morning is far too much pressure. As my phone with WhatsApp on is four years old, it's not got a video editing app, and not enough memory to make a video editing app work properly. Better to get them all done  in advance and avoid the stress. But learning how to achieve the desired result is taking up a lot of time.

I've had a request to take a funeral at St John's in two weeks time on a Friday, Mother Frances' day off. It'll be the first funeral in church I've done since restrictions were lifted. How this is going to work with restricted numbers and social distancing, I have yet to learn. Interesting times! 

A small creative milestone

Today's early news announced that three households can meet from 24th to 27th December to celebrate Christmas together, all over the UK. Given that restrictions on indoor home meetings seem to be a key factor in curbing infection rates, according to epidemiologists, this is something of a risk. In the other hand, the Oxford research group has produced a vaccine which is 70-90% effective, according to how it is administered. It's easier to produce in volume, and distribution can begin one regulatory approval has been granted, possibly as early as next month. Is this part of the Christmas risk assessment I wonder? Everyone is desperate for some sign of hope that his plague can be brought under control. 

Having kept an eye on all scientific developments in the news since the outset of the pandemic, I thought early on that instead of taking several years to roll out a new vaccine, we'd see first signs of progress by the end of this year, but the pace of research and development leading to roll out of effective products, and several of them, has amazed and delighted me. If only the world's political leaders could collaborate as effectively as its scientific leaders!

After Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day', I uploaded to What'sApp the first of my daily reflections to the Parish daily prayer group. Image and text must be added separately. The first time I got it wrong and had to delete and start again. Luckily I started on time because I remembered. The daily notification I put on my phone last night didn't materialise and I had to add it again. I have no idea why this happened. It's reassuring to think that at least some of the time, my brain is more reliable than my phone.

I cooked lunch again and went for a walk into town again. A lot of work is being done on new footpaths in and around the SWALEC stadium, Sports Centre next door and the temporary Sophia Gardens coach station site. Whilst it's a good idea to improve safety with by separating vehicles and pedestrians in the public realm, it does mean tarmac covering more soil, less surface area to soak up torrential rain, with the prospect of run-of adding to flood water levels in the Taff. Surely there must be a better way?

 I took more photos in town, especially of the bus station construction site. A huge high rise building is rising above the entire ground level area given for a new bus and coach terminal, apartments and offices apparently. It'll be much bigger than I thought, overshadowing the BCC Cymru HQ next door, now in use at last, and totally dwarfing the main railway station, dating from Brunel's day. It was called 'Cardiff General' when I was growing up, but re-branded 'Cardiff Central' by British Rail in 1973. Prefer 'Cardiff General', as it's more distinctive, but that's not a name Brunel would have known as it wasn't changed until 1924. Before that it was simply 'Cardiff'. 

In the evening, we watched a fascinating programme on BBC Four in the 'Britain's Lost Masterpieces' series, showing how cleaning and restoration work on a painting in Derby's museum revealed that a landscape without provenance was an authentic painting by eighteenth century English painter Joseph Wright, whose portrait and narrative paintings are considered on a par with that of Rubens. More great detective work, and for once, nothing to do with crime!

Before turning in for the night I decided to work on the end of my novel. Half an hour turned into an hour and a half, but when I had written the final sentence at half part midnight, and re-read it, I realised it brought the story to the end which had been eluding me for some time. At last it's possible to discern a shape to the entire narrative. It will need much revising and re-ordering in due course, but this was an important moment for me, as if a weight had been lifted off my mind. 

I've done a lot of writing in my life and still enjoy it enormously. I have a one work of Christian apologetic, written and revised up to publication stander over fifteen years, for which I couldn't find a publisher, some children's stories not revised to publication standard, and several other unfinished projects which never completely took shape. To have reached a point where the novel has a shape which I can recognise is good place to be, even if it requires a lot more work and may never find a publisher.

Digital reaching out

Last night, although tired, curiosity got the better of me and I looked into the possibility of an app for my Chromebook which would enable me to record audio. I found a simple plug-in extension that does the job nicely and saves MP3 files for podcasting. I couldn't have asked for better. So, straight away, a made a recording of my sermon and emailed it to Dave for uploading. I now have to think about what I can do, here on my own, to record the Communion service we should have been celebrating in St Rafel tomorrow.

I took quite an effort of concentration to record first the Ministry of the Word and then the Ministry of the Sacrament. I wrote a special 'Intercessions during a Pandemic' prayers to include in the latter. Then it was a matter of uploading the MP3 sound files to the Chaplaincy Website. Thankfully Dave was able to read them, but uploading was prohibited because both files were just over the prescribed limit of 25mb. They needed editing, so I installed Audacity on the Chaplaincy PC. It worked a treat, I was able not only to improve the files with unobtrusive minor trims, but also compress them to 30-40% of the size of the original produced. These were uploadable, and can be found on the Ibiza Chaplaincy website.

I was pleased with my efforts, but really needed exercise afterwards. The sun was getting low in the sky when I went out, but I did my daily mileage quota, ending the walk in darkness. After supper I chatted on WhatsApp video with the family gathered around the dining table in Kenilworth for Rhiannon's birthday, and at the same time with Rachel in her kitchen in Tempe AZ. It's the first time I have had a three way conversation in this way, and was surprised at how well the house broadband coped with it. We must do this again when the international timing fits. Meanwhile I am wondering how I'll cope with physical isolation and living with the 'expert' knowledge that I am at particular risk and vulnerable because I am more than three score years and ten.
 

Coming to Ibiza

Awake at seven, breakfasting at eight, out of the Dalt Murailla hotel by ten past nine. I walked down past the Palau Real de Almudaina to the Avenida d'Antoni Maura at shore level, intending to walk part of the way or pick up a bus or taxi to the Estacion Maritimo. Then the unexpected happened.

On a short stretch of curved slope which was covered with a thin invisible coating of something slippery which wasn't water, I went into an uncontrollable slide and ended up slowly, thankfully on the ground. One of my left quad muscles popped, but didn't tear, and I didn't twist my knee. Two kind gents picked me up and gingerly I walked away, but only fifty metres as I reached the nearest taxi rank. This put an end to my ambition to get some early exercise. Better safe than sorry, until I'm sure no damage has been done. A year of relentless daily walking added to body memory from ski slithers paid off in terms of muscle control and joint strength. For anyone my age not used to walking a lot it could have been disastrous.

The taxi dropped me at the Mediterraneo terminal. I escaped a long confusing walk, ending with the search for pedestrian access route! I was horrified to find the slower cheaper ship runs tomorrow not today. I must have read the web info incorrectly. Or was it a matter of leaving a day early, then not noticing the difference in sailing dates and times? The desk clerk sent me to the neighbouring Balearica terminal 200m away. I knew they do a daily sailing, but would I be in time to book a ticket? Yes, at 09.45, just.

The transfer coach arrived at 10.10 and took us on a circuitous route to the quayside where at 11.15 we left port. What a treat! A very modern 'greener' ferry running on LPG, with a giant gas fuel tank at the stern end of the ship behind the exhaust funnel - can't call it a smoke stack in these days of running on smokeless LPG. I can't imagine an entirely electrically driven ship though I can imagine reverting to sail-ships delivering mechanical power to batteries supplying electric motors, with the blades / paddles made of photo-voltaic cells. Complex to manage, costly to make but zero carbon foot-print on vessels ten, twenty times the size of an antique tea clipper. I bet solutions of this kind are already dreams being turned into reality, even if it takes a few years to see the light of day.

Anyway, a very pleasant clean and bright ferry with a deck of cabins and a couple of decks with comfy reclining seats, not to mention restaurants and bars, plus a couple of open deck areas of smokers and sun worshippers. I thought the crossing would be two hours, as that was what I found on internet booking sites, but it turned out to be three. There was easy access wifi, fifteen minutes for free and then pay as you go for business users. Interestingly, access to WhatsApp was free and available, so long as there was enough bandwidth. I think WhatsApp must get used pretty widely in this region. People involved in the Ibiza Chaplaincy also network with each other using WhatsApp. 

Cell-phone connectivity weakens away from shore in any case, so the entire ship's internet access is reliant on its direct satellite link, which has its data-flow limits with dozens of extra users on board, all presuming they can use on-line services ad-lib as usual on board, in addition to proper normal usage for ship's management purposes. On land or at sea there's never enough data capacity, so it seems. All this accounts for flaky connections, stuff that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, and for messages which normally take second to transmit taking hours instead. Everything sits in a digital queue somewhere or another, God knows where. No short cuts.Just like the NHS really.

The ship seemed to get slower and slower as we cruised down the coast well before hitting eight knots for entering port to dock. It seemed that us few foot passengers were kept waiting an age to retrieve our luggage, and then had a quarter of a mile walk to the arrivals terminal, dragging cases. I could see Sarah out in the car park far away, walking into the terminal as I reached it from the other side. Within minutes, we were on our way out of Eizibissa town (the Catalan for Ibiza) north-west in the direction of Sant Antoni de Portmani. The chaplaincy house is located in an urbanzacion not far from the seaside town of La Cala de Bou. The Chaplaincy house is named Can Bou, which name as puzzled me for weeks, but now it can be revealed - the missing apostrophe on the maps.

In Catalan its Ca'n Bou i.e. Casa en Bou. I've seen this apostrophic contraction in written Catalan before, but forgotten about it until now. How nice to clear up a little mystery! The house is located out en el campo, it's a rural housing estate, heaven knows how big. The house has a basement level which I think is for community use, with Chaplain's accommodation above it, a blue shuttered casa blanca in meadow full of flowers by a wooded arroyo. The fridge and larder have been stocked and there was a meal ready for me to warm up later, thanks to Sarah. 

A workman was re-tiling the front steps as I arrived. As on several other very different occasions in the past few days I've had the confidence to chat in Spanish. I feel I really have reached a turning point, thanks to many hours spent on the Duo Lingo app daily during my long months of idleness. 

Once I'd unpacked and sorted myself out, I walked to the nearest shop named Es Cuco a kilometre away, on the hill above the road down into La Cala de Bou. It's a very well stocked food store, with fresh fruit and veg, bread, meat and wine, as well as the usual tinned foods. I was very impressed, and bought a few extra fresh items and some wine while I was there.

When I returned the gate to the finca was shut, and I presumed was locked by the workman when he left. In the absence of key, I climbed over the fence to reach the house. Only later did I learn that the gate was just jammed shut! After sunset, I felt I needed to stretch my legs again, and spent half an hour walking in the moonlight along un-metalled roads linking neighbouring fincas. The moon isn't full, but in the absence of artificial light away from towns and main roads, it shed enough light to cast a shadow. It was delightful magic!

Just after I got back, Ashley rang me, and it was a real pleasure to chat and tell the story of what has been for me an eventful day, a day, more than any other in which I feel more like the way I was back before my perianal abscess took over and began to dominate my life.

Thank God is all I can say, thank God!

  

Shots in the dark

It was Rachel's 45th birthday today. Clare and I recorded ourselves singing her a 'Happy Birthday' on WhatsApp after breakfast, and sent it to her so she'd receive it when she woke up some eight hours later in Arizona. We were spoke to her in the late evening just before we went to bed, and she was setting out to collect Jasmine from school. A small consolation for being so far away. It's at times like this you really regret such a distance between you and your nearest and dearest. 

I walked into town mid afternoon and met Ashley for a cuppa and a chat in John Lewis' top floor restaurant. It was dusk when we parted company and the traffic was moving slowly, so I walked back along the largely unlit riverside path, busy with pedestrians and bike commuters armed with dazzlingly bright LED lights. It made me wonder how many collisions occur at winter evening rush hour.

I took with me my trusty seven year old Lumix LX5, handy for photographing townscapes. Nearly all my Central Square photos over the past three and a half years have been taken with it, but on this occasion, the natural light was waning by the time I arrived.  I took a few on the path along the Taff walking home, by way of an experiment, so see what Google Photos web editing tools could make of them. Maybe if I'd used the camera's ability to take uncompressed RAW format images to edit, I would have had more better results, but I've only ever worked with JPEG images, whose quality in low light on a camera of this age isn't good anyway. Three of the five I took were keepers, for interest's sake. Next time I'm out with it in the dark, I'll experiment.

 

BIrthday camera

We were up early this morning for a celebratory birthday breakfast with Rhiannon, before she set off for London with Kath and Anto for a visit to Madame Tussaud's. Her Big Pressy was a Sony H400 camera, which several of us clubbed together to buy for her. Naturally, I'm delighted to think she's taking an interest in photography, and wanting to make the step up from small pocket camera. 

Apart from the prohibitive high cost of a DSLR as a first step up the camera ladder, Sony superzooms offer a lightweight alternative with a long lens and body of a similar size. It takes a while to get used to carrying around something which doesn't slip easily into your pocket, and getting the most out of a 50+ zoom. If using it regularly catches on with her, it may see her through the rest of school. 

As she seems headed towards an artistic career, a time will come when a high quality camera upgrade will be necessary, and by then she'll be more motivated to manage the added weight and size. One step at a time however. It's very pleasing to see her preference doing design work on paper, rather than with a digital device. Who knows, she might even take to old fashioned film photography? There are plenty of bargain antique cameras around. Pity about the cost of using film.

Our home journey after breakfast was relaxed and uneventful. The roads were fairly quiet, perhaps because it's half term. Later in the day, Kath started sending us funny family photos of them mixing with celebrities in wax on What'sApp. The problem for me was recognising who the celebrities are, as well as knowing anything about them. The same was true, watching last night's Brit awards. It's another universe I don't belong to. That's the trouble with getting old.

  

All Saints day with Catholic and Orthodox flavours

Another mild autumnal morning, awake before dawn again and on the terrace doing Chi Gung exercises once the sun had risen - it's just warm enough. As no Eucharist was planned to be celebrated in the chaplaincy today, I took extra time over Morning Prayer, adding in the lectionary readings for the Mass of All Saints. In the course of checking my various internet accounts, I came across the Facebook page of a former colleague who converted to Orthodoxy when he retired. One of the articles he posted was on the history of the minority Orthodox church in China at the turn of the twentieth century, and how over two hundred faithful and clergy were martyred during the Boxer rebellion. That was a timely thing to read about on All Saints' Day. 

He also posted the text of an Orthodox hymn known as the Akathist of Thanksgiving. It was, I quote; "found among the effects of Protopresbyter Gregory Petrov upon his death in a prison camp in 1940. The title is from the words of Saint John Chrysostom as he was dying in exile. It is a song of praise from amidst the most terrible sufferings attributed to Metropolitan Tryphon of Turkestan."

Metropolitan Tryphon was a son of Georgian nobility. He was a Bishop for 33 years, before and after the Russian revolution, so his entire ministry was conducted in violent troubled times. He is said to have written this hymn not long before his death in 1934. It's long, as are others in this unique liturgical genre, including some repeats nearly 3,200 words long, and would take half an hour to read aloud, and much longer to sing prayerfully using the Russian version of Byzantine chant. It is nonetheless a poetic work of great beauty, expressing heartfelt thanks for an entire life, for its joys and sorrows and for the grace of God at work through them all, and written by someone reflecting in faith on a life full of trial and suffering, lived in faith without regret or resentment or remorse. 

It's a faithful old man's prayer, one that any retired person might well read, mark learn and inwardly digest. The words can be found here - just one small section for a taster, there's lots more.

Glory to Thee for calling me into being

Glory to Thee, showing me the beauty of the universe

Glory to Thee, spreading out before me heaven and earth

Like the pages in a book of eternal wisdom

Glory to Thee for Thine eternity in this fleeting world

Glory to Thee for Thy mercies, seen and unseen

Glory to Thee through every sigh of my sorrow

Glory to Thee for every step of my life's journey

For every moment of glory

Glory to Thee, O God, from age to age.

I decided to go out for a walk around ten in the Garrucha direction, with no real aim in mind apart from checking which of the big bulk carriers was in port today. It turned out that the 'Kure Harbour' had left and been replaced overnight by the 'Pisti', although the latter had been due to dock before the former if the marine traffic website was to believed. Anyway, when I'd taken more photographs, on impulse, I headed up the hill so see if the Parish Church of San Joachin was open on this fiesta day. Indeed it was, but better still a Mass was due to be celebrated at midday. I was delighted. There were forty minutes to wait, but it meant I could have a good look around the church before the faithful were first summoned by bells at half past eleven.

The priest came in to get ready, and put on some background religious musak, which did nothing to stop people being chatty when they came in. By the time the Mass began the church was a third full, sixty mostly older people. A few hymns were sung, the priest preached what felt like a lengthy homily but may not have been so long as it felt. His voice sounded gravelly, and I think he was complaining of a sore throat. He spoke conversationally, but to my ear unintelligibly, although I understood many key words, I couldn't discern sentence structure, which was frustrating. I heard on the radio a few days ago that after Japanese, Spanish the second fastest spoken language in the world. I guess that means on an everyday basis, as I find I can decipher a fair amount of what broadcasters have to say.

We were out of church by a quarter to one, and I was back home preparing lunch by half past two, largely thanks to the brevity of Roman Catholic liturgical hymnody, editable to suit the occasion. So different from the rites of Byzantium, Moscow, Jerusalem or Antioch.

I went out for another walk just before sunset, first along the beach, and then inland up one of the side streets away from the beach in search of a clear view of the spectacular orange and grey sky which had developed once the sun had dipped behind Mojacar pueblo. This took me along the Calle Camino del Palmeral, along which several urbanizacions are strung out. It ends over the hill where it meets with a roundabout below the pueblo, another short cut when walking up there which I've now found.

In the evening I found I'd received a couple of verification code notifications from Gmail regarding my sister's account, which I set up for her years ago, with my address as the emergency point of reference in the event of needing to reset a password. As she doesn't use the mobile phone she persuaded me to buy for her, I couldn't just text it to her to use, so I had to ask Clare to call her and check if this had truly happened (and wasn't a hacker's effort), and then pass on the code via WhatApp (usefully encrypted) so she can read it out to my sister over the phone. Unforeseen consequences of trying to be helpful!

Thursday celebration and ship tracking

I drove inland again this morning, to celebrate the Eucharist of Saints Simon and Jude a day early at the Aljambra chapel. A fortnight ago, Fr Alan introduced me to a shorter cross country route from the main road into Albox to circumvent the town centre. I took what I thought was the right turning at the autovia exit, then took the wrong cross country road, taking me up into the hills to the north of town, nowhere near my destination. Once I was sure this was so, I turned around, returned to the main road and drove the route I first learned through the town, only to find the road out towards Aljambra was blocked off due to unannounced resurfacing work. 

Once more I turned around and headed back to the edge of town where I knew the turning I'd missed must be near. I rang Fr Alan, but despite his best intentions to direct me, was still bewildered. He was however, in a position to call a member of the congregation awaiting my arrival and explain what had happened. I back-tracked and soon identified the turning I should have taken off the main road. From there, it was easy, and I arrived, but a few minutes later than expected. Arrival was a rare pleasure!

After the Eucharist, I joined the congregation in an excellent lunch served in the chapel itself. This happens every fourth Sunday in the month. It's great. There's always enough to feed anyone else who might just turn up. That's proper Christian hospitality, something I've noticed over the past few years is happening these days at churches in all sorts of places in different ways.

After the meal, I returned to Mojacar, shopping at Lidl's on the way, and later walked along the beach as far as the Parador. Clare called on Whatsapp, as I was reaching the turning point. She's now up in Kenilworth for the weekend with Rhiannon, as Kath and Anto come and go with the Wriggledance performance tour - fifty venues all over England over six months, focussed on times it's possible to garner an audience of parents with pre-school children. I spoke to Kath about the tour, also Clare and Rhiannon, while sitting on a bench across the road from the Parador. "We stayed there a few times, Mojacar's lovely" said Kath. I didn't know they'd been here and enjoyed the place before me.

On the return walk, I caught sight of a cargo ship that had sailed out of Garrucha. It wasn't one of the larger bulk carrier ships but a smaller craft of shallower draft, laden with containers, I think. Its side was emblazoned with the legend WAGENBORG.

An on-line check later told me Royal Wagenborg is a diverse Dutch shipping company with global interests and hundreds of ships. I'd never heard of it before. Being curious about its cargo, I googled the company, then sent them an email enquiry to find out what the ship had come to collect from Garrucha and where it was bound. 

Enquiring of the Puerto de Garrucha website didn't give me what I wanted to know, but set me on on another search, until I got a fascinating glimpse into port arrivals and departures. The local marine traffic website is most informative and user friendly, so one can easily find information about local commercial shipping traffic. Such an amazing, unexpected evening diversion.

    

Lying low in the shade

Today, the temperature climbed into the thirties, but fortunately the humidity was lower, making life more bearable than it has been over the past week. I lay low in the apartment for much of the day, except for a brief outing to obtain essential supplies, and an evening paseo when it was cooler. Fortunately there was lots for me to do, preparing and sending out the documents for the BCRP Board meeting in a fortnight's time, exchanging messages with family. 

Finally I got around to installing WhatsApp on my Backberry, to enable me to download a video file my niece Nicky and nephew Julian both sent me, of the speech I mate at our Golden Wedding celebration. And, there's another to come of Kath and Rachel singing their tribute song too, when I can freely download the files. This is almost impossible using the apartment wi-fi due to size restrictions, so I have to wait until I'm in the office to update many larger files.

The trial of Helen on the Archers is a tense affair, stressful to listen to, I find, slow yet compelling. I have so far resisted the temptation to find out what the commentariat has to say about the proceedings, or follow the the debate threads on Twitter. Partly because of internet restrictions, but al least that's some time I'll not be wasting on-line.